I of the Dragon

"Drag on" is right. And drag on and drag on...

In I of the Dragon, you take to the skies as one of three winged beasts: Annoth, the hearty fire-breathing dragon, Barroth, the icy-breathed magically-inclined lizard, or Morrogh, the death magic wielder who breathes acid. While each dragon offers a little bit of variety in the way you play the game, the object in each of the 12 missions is pretty much the same: kill everything that moves. While I of the Dragon claims to offer up some RTS elements such as letting you build cities and defend them, all this turns out to be is flying over an area where a town appears and blasting endless waves of creatures with your breath attack or spells until they're dead.

Now don't get me wrong. It's not the fact that the only thing you do in the game is blast everything you come across that I found so maddening. Lots of games use the same design, and there are even some great games like Diablo and Dark Alliance that follow this formula. The big problem is the way this design was implemented in I of the Dragon that makes the experience so poor.

The game pretty much just consists of moving up and down while raining down fire, acid or ice on your enemies. The default controls delegate you to the right side of the keyboard, with arrow and keypad keys used for primary movement. This is an extremely awkward setup since most people have their mouse on the right-hand side of their keyboard, making for a cramped space for both of your hands. The controls can be reconfigured, however, so you can assign whatever keys you wish to movement, zooming the camera, etc

The controls themselves aren't well-suited to a game that stresses high-action combat. You can't strafe, you can't move backwards and the clumsy auto-targeting system more often targets a creature that's far in the distance rather than one that's actually close to you shooting whatever it is zombies or giant slugs spit at high-flying dragons. To make matters even worse, the disorienting first-person camera makes the game almost unplayable from the "eye of the dragon" view.

Even more disorienting are a few missions where you drop the wings and play as a human hunting down -- you guessed it -- more of the same fantasy creatures you were laying waste to as a dragon. While the interface was clumsy and disorienting while playing as a dragon, it's nearly impossible to play the land-based missions as you stumble your way across the plain terrain with an already poor interface that was meant for winged beasts, not legged humans, getting stuck on the many ugly trees that dot the landscape. And even when you aren't playing the game, the shoddy design continues into the sloppy interface and confusing menu system.

Gameplay in I of the Dragon leaves a lot to be desired. The visuals, on the other hand...wait, there is no other hand. The graphics are just as poor as the gameplay. Muddy, low-res textures, poor lighting effects and simple character models make for one dated looking game, and the bland, generic landscapes and enemies do little to get you into the experience or make you feel like you're really a mighty dragon spreading fear throughout the land. And although the numerous spells ranging from magic missiles to raising the dead are accompanied by lighting and particle effects, they are also unimpressive, and look very simplistic compared to today's standards.

The Verdict

All of this is really a shame, because I of the Dragon had some neat ideas that could have made for one great game. I mean, who wouldn't want to play as a dragon raining fire down on hordes of hapless creatures while they cringe in fear of your greatness? Unfortunately the poor implementation just makes for one sloppy experience that's not even worth playing when there are so many great titles out this time of year. Don't waste your time.